Terrible for small businesses, which are predominantly pass-through corporations and the tax is paid at the officers/owner's personal income tax rate. Have to look more at what they are proposing for the increased tax on owner's wages, but seems to me they might be trying to force people into C Corporations, which aren't as easy to deal with (more rules, regulations and reporting requirements).

Also, state tax deduction isn't big relief, people in states with no state tax/low tax have been able to write off their sales taxes for several years which generally is equitable to the state tax (and doesn't require claiming state/local refunds as income in the following year).

Would have been a better choice to change/eliminate alternative minimum tax from the personal returns than to remove from business returns. That'd be real middle class tax relief. Could be as simple as adjusting it to take into account inflation since the tax was implemented in the 70's.

Also would like to know what the corporate exception on interest for 'small firms' is - if small is income or size/employees. If I recall, Trump's companies are rather small on the employee front.

Overall, it's nice but they could do better. It's a nice gift for the upper class, tosses enough bones to the middle/lower class to make them feel good. Won't stimulate a ton of growth (not enough given back to the middle/lower class to get them to spend more, rich tend to squirrel away extra money without adding a lot of liquidity to the economy), could be disasterous for the budget if they don't make large cuts in spending.

bucfanclw wrote:Aren't the middle class incomes taxed again when distributed in the form of sales and property taxes?

if you want to say they are double taxed knock yourself out ... no one else does because those taxes aren’t on income, they are on sales and property.

Double taxation of corporations is very very basic Acctg stuff. It’s taught in Intro to Business 101.

If you want to count the ways we pay taxes in general...don’t stop at income, property and sales....keep going. There are many many more.

But a corporation isn't taxed on the dividends it pays out to shareholders, the shareholders are taxed. The corporation exists as a separate entity from the shareholders. If you want to eliminate the corporate tax entity to eliminate the "double taxation" and just tax the shareholders at normal income level, then have at it. That's the perfect way to eliminate corporate welfare.

Alpha wrote:Someone please explain to my remedial ass how "Trickle Down Economics" is supposed to work?

That is essentially what The Trumpster is shooting for here.

If my memory serves...and it usually does...this failed the first time around.

Is this version better...somehow?

It's better because the average family is getting an extra pizza every week. Pay no attention to the thousands the millionaires are pulling back in. And all it's going to cost is a few middle- and lower- class lives when their healthcare is taken away.

Just saw a new item in the House Bill. Apparently it would count some tuition reimbursements and scholarships as taxable income

So if someone does a PhD in Physics, in addition to paying tax on their $20K annual stipend, they have to pay tax on $15K to $40K per year of tuition wavers.

It seems it would either lead to:

A. Fewer people pursuing advanced degreesB. Schools having to increase their cash stipends to cover the increase in taxes.

I can tell you as someone who had to live four years on $16K gross per year in his early 30s when I was studying, it sucks enough already ... can’t imagine seeing that reduced by another 5 to 8K to cover taxes

Zarniwoop wrote:Just saw a new item in the House Bill. Apparently it would count some tuition reimbursements and scholarships as taxable income

So if someone does a PhD in Physics, in addition to paying tax on their $20K annual stipend, they have to pay tax on $15K to $40K per year of tuition wavers.

It seems it would either lead to:

A. Fewer people pursuing advanced degreesB. Schools having to increase their cash stipends to cover the increase in taxes.

I can tell you as someone who had to live four years on $16K gross per year in his early 30s when I was studying, it sucks enough already ... can’t imagine seeing that reduced by another 5 to 8K to cover taxes

I'm guessing the goal is A. Between this and taking steps to make it more difficult to bring a class action against for-profit schools that defraud students it seems like they really want to push for more of an education divide.

Ideally if they wanted to keep people out of schools that wouldn't benefit, they'd focus more on selling trade schools as viable options instead of making it harder for deserving students to get in purely for financial reasons. It's hard enough to get through the stresses of a full college load without having to wonder if you're going to be able to eat this week.

Zarniwoop wrote:Just saw a new item in the House Bill. Apparently it would count some tuition reimbursements and scholarships as taxable income

So if someone does a PhD in Physics, in addition to paying tax on their $20K annual stipend, they have to pay tax on $15K to $40K per year of tuition wavers.

It seems it would either lead to:

A. Fewer people pursuing advanced degreesB. Schools having to increase their cash stipends to cover the increase in taxes.

I can tell you as someone who had to live four years on $16K gross per year in his early 30s when I was studying, it sucks enough already ... can’t imagine seeing that reduced by another 5 to 8K to cover taxes

I'm guessing the goal is A. Between this and taking steps to make it more difficult to bring a class action against for-profit schools that defraud students it seems like they really want to push for more of an education divide.

Ideally if they wanted to keep people out of schools that wouldn't benefit, they'd focus more on selling trade schools as viable options instead of making it harder for deserving students to get in purely for financial reasons. It's hard enough to get through the stresses of a full college load without having to wonder if you're going to be able to eat this week.

Though doesn't the rational actor within this framework select trade schools at a higher rate when faced with the increasingly insurmountable debt wall though then instead? I know it would be nice to simply "sell" the concept of trade school to people to get them to choose that route, but who's going to front the advertising costs (literal, and societal) - why not just help them make that choice rationally. I'm saying this because this economy doesn't necessarily have a need for more PhD physicists, it has a need for more welders, and skilled laborers. There's only so much room on the top half of the pyramid - and the economy and our valuation and societal priorities have dictated that its a (intellectual) pyramid with a relatively wide base and a relatively narrow top.

What's the point of releasing a bunch of PhD holders into an economy that has no place for them? You end up with a bunch of people who hold recreational PhDs that are taking lower end jobs because that's all that's available and inadvertently devalue the worth of a PhD. I know numerous people who were capable of PhD's - and I mean people who were admitted to, and in the middle of their research, who flat out stopped because the cost-benefit analysis made no sense, as is, in this economy. And as far as the educational gap, we're referring to post-grad education correct? Nobody's stopping anybody from picking up a book. If the economy dictates the number of open PhD-level jobs, and you have a surplus of "PhD-level talent" who didn't go the PhD route and instead just got a basic level degree and got the job that would have been available to them anyways, had they gotten the PhD or not, there's nothing keeping them from opening a book and furthering their knowledge in a specialized field in their own time and using that knowledge to climb whatever economical ladder they wish

Yeah, I mean I get it, it would have blown for me and people that are in the middle of doing one or just starting, but it may end up saving some people from living a life hamstrung by incredible debt - the jobs that pay PhD level are like $30-40-$50k starting, and there's not much of a "corporate ladder" to climb in the post-PhD route, so your long term prospects often push you back into a route that didn't require a PhD in the first place. Quite honestly I wouldn't even recommend the route these days I've seen what the job market looks like from that end; things are moving too fast and you're wasting too much time to just enter the economy at 30 or later with a PhD, and if you do, it better be for a highly specialized thing that you're absolutely obsessed with and know you want to do for the rest of your life, and that you know is in a lucrative field, otherwise, it's a sort of a fools errand to be honest. So why not give people a dose of realism from early on?

If this sort of thing causes a 10-15% drop in PhD pursuers in an economy that already has a surplus and no need for PhD's, then it's probably a good thing overall. Like I said, nobody's stopping anybody from picking up a book, and if you're the smartest person at the office, people are going to know whether you have a piece of paper saying it or not

Last edited by beardmcdoug on Wed Nov 08, 2017 7:53 am, edited 1 time in total.

I’m not sure about disciplines within the humanities but there is certainly not a surplus of PhDs in bunsiness and the STEM fields. There is actually a glut.

Salaries are shifting up because a dearth of supply compared to demand. Graduates often have a choice of 5-10 jobs when they finish...and that’s just within Academia. One of my buddies just finished his PhD in Operations Research. He’s never worked a day in his life (in the traditional sense). He did undergrad,MBA straight to PhD. He is going to private industry now. The money that large corporations are throwing at him is ****ing silly....I mean really stupid. (Granted the dude is exceptionally smart).

As you know from past discussions I very much agree with your premise of learning applied trades. I just don’t see that much of an application when it comes to this particular topic. I think the trade folks would come from the traditional undergrad population not the advanced degree folks.

I get what you're saying, but my issue with the way it's being approached is it's taking the choice away from a very well qualified person from a lower income family that needs that stipend to keep more trust fund kids in that may not be as deserving. The long term effect would be a watering down of PhD field that limits our overall intellectual growth and development. It's like they saw Hidden Figures and decided they needed to figure out a way to keep that from happening in the future.

2. The more I think about it the less I see it massively cutting PhD programs. Think about it...why do most people do a PhD? Because they feel a calling. Would a couple thousand dollars extra expense over 4 years (out of a 40 year career) stop people from that calling? Maybe a few, but I doubt it would dramatically cut enrollment ... and that assumes schools don’t up ther stipend to account for it

This is similar to the debate we hear every few elections about taxing health insurance contributions that your employer pays for you. Like that, I just don’t see it getting any teeth

I'm shifting my focus to Net neutrality which is on deck in the house.

I get the feeling that if you and I said we were strongly against net neutrality we'd flip a few people on this board to being for it. Reasoned debate on it has completely failed at this point. We should frame the argument more like this:

The biggest driver against Net Neutrality is Comcast, who owns NBC. Do you really want to give those damn libs their way? They want to take away a state's right to adopt their own laws! Get that out of here!

I'm shifting my focus to Net neutrality which is on deck in the house.

I get the feeling that if you and I said we were strongly against net neutrality we'd flip a few people on this board to being for it. Reasoned debate on it has completely failed at this point. We should frame the argument more like this:

The biggest driver against Net Neutrality is Comcast, who owns NBC. Do you really want to give those damn libs their way? They want to take away a state's right to adopt their own laws! Get that out of here!

That added bonus is that statement is 100% true.

Lol. Yes. Stand up against evil Comcast/NBC and TimeWarner/CNN support net neutrality!!